Good luck Dr, hope you enjoy the fretless ride! That's a nice bass you are getting!
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Fretless doubts... Should I continue?
- Thread starter gregouille23
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Good luck Dr, hope you enjoy the fretless ride! That's a nice bass you are getting!
I know exactly what you mean. I've tried to use my fretless out of the house pin a few occasions. At a mates place for our "Poker Night" jam i couldn't play well at all after a puff so I'd use the fretted (in this jam i also play kick and snare pedals at the same time son it takes some concentration.....).
I used it once at a gig with my two daughters for a few songs and it sounded good but i didn't feel confident with it.
Lately I've played around 90% of the time at home with the fretless and hopefully in a year or two I'll feel confident enough to gig it.
Thanks for the input Token
Actually I try to play all the songs on the fretless, and can kind of pull it off unless it requires a lot of fast position switches, or if it goes too much above the 12th fret (Intonation on an unlined fretless after the 12th fret is just... tough ). But my worry is more about looking at the neck too much and being too focused on my own intonation to the detriment of the band as a whole. But I suppose I just need to keep practising until it becomes more natural.
Thank you, it's a 1990 Signature.
The F-hole is a sticker on a solid body, 11 lbs though!
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Nothing a good strap cannot fix
My main player is a Ray35 CA which weighs in at 5 kgs, so about 11 pounds as well. I honestly don't mind the weight with my wide strap as the bass balances nicely. I use Minotaur straps, and never looked back!
Instruments with fingerboards are common and learning to play them good is common as well.
I feel you have transferred playing skills of your fretted instrument to your fretless, rather than develop a fretless technique...which is a fingerboard technique.
My main lesson for developing the fingerboard is:
Practice reading with sheets, either standard notation or charts.
Ireal Book Pro is a great app for this as you can have new charts to play to daily.
Now you cannot look at your hands and read...so you learn to use your ears.
Yes it is messy, but you get better because you hear the quality of the notes better.
The quality of the note depends on how long after you finger the note does it become the correct pitch.
So you either slide to the correct pitch or you roll your finger into it.
As you get better you eliminate the need to slide into the note, and lessen the ammout of finger roll you need.
Finger roll is just a slight roll of the finger left or right to pitch the note correct to your ears....not position you fingers to your eyes.
You will develop a feel for hand postions, and let your ears do the rest. So you have set positions where you put your hand to allow your fingers access to notes.
The slower the pieces you play the more time you will have to develop the correct pitch....playing in tune.
With the Ireal book, you can download it for a fee, I use the pro version it's about £10.
So pick an easy piece, say Blues - Jazz.
In settings turn down the bass, so it cannot be heard, you will play the bass not the app.
Set the tempo to 100BPM
Set the cycle, how many times it will repeat, to 5x
Set your volume or plug it in to an amp source and hit play.
It will count you in so fist time around only play the root note and nothing else. You have time to locate it and finger it correct.
Second time around Play the Root and the 5th only.
Third time around Play the Root and the 3rd only, whether minor or major it's still a 3rd.
Fourth time around Play only the root and any extension s, in this case the 7th which happens to be dominant 7s.
The for the 5th time play and use all as you see fit to make the piece flow.
In doing these exercises at this tempo you develop consistent hand positions that consistently put the fingers in the correct positions to play the notes you want.
You learn the relationship of the chord tones to the root of where the hand position put the fingers and your ears fine tune the note with either being spot on or a slight rolling motion...that is your timbre, your voice or if you want your accent when playing.
On your good days there are no real problems, on your bad days you limit how "out of tune" you may sound and how much you may feel you struggle to play correctly.
On fretted instrument you have vast margins for error, but on a fingerboard you have to be exacting, so develop playing a fingerboard because it transfers to a fretted board easily....but a fretted board does not transfer to a fingerboard with the same ease.
Good luck with it and I hope this may help you out.
I feel you have transferred playing skills of your fretted instrument to your fretless, rather than develop a fretless technique...which is a fingerboard technique.
My main lesson for developing the fingerboard is:
Practice reading with sheets, either standard notation or charts.
Ireal Book Pro is a great app for this as you can have new charts to play to daily.
Now you cannot look at your hands and read...so you learn to use your ears.
Yes it is messy, but you get better because you hear the quality of the notes better.
The quality of the note depends on how long after you finger the note does it become the correct pitch.
So you either slide to the correct pitch or you roll your finger into it.
As you get better you eliminate the need to slide into the note, and lessen the ammout of finger roll you need.
Finger roll is just a slight roll of the finger left or right to pitch the note correct to your ears....not position you fingers to your eyes.
You will develop a feel for hand postions, and let your ears do the rest. So you have set positions where you put your hand to allow your fingers access to notes.
The slower the pieces you play the more time you will have to develop the correct pitch....playing in tune.
With the Ireal book, you can download it for a fee, I use the pro version it's about £10.
So pick an easy piece, say Blues - Jazz.
In settings turn down the bass, so it cannot be heard, you will play the bass not the app.
Set the tempo to 100BPM
Set the cycle, how many times it will repeat, to 5x
Set your volume or plug it in to an amp source and hit play.
It will count you in so fist time around only play the root note and nothing else. You have time to locate it and finger it correct.
Second time around Play the Root and the 5th only.
Third time around Play the Root and the 3rd only, whether minor or major it's still a 3rd.
Fourth time around Play only the root and any extension s, in this case the 7th which happens to be dominant 7s.
The for the 5th time play and use all as you see fit to make the piece flow.
In doing these exercises at this tempo you develop consistent hand positions that consistently put the fingers in the correct positions to play the notes you want.
You learn the relationship of the chord tones to the root of where the hand position put the fingers and your ears fine tune the note with either being spot on or a slight rolling motion...that is your timbre, your voice or if you want your accent when playing.
On your good days there are no real problems, on your bad days you limit how "out of tune" you may sound and how much you may feel you struggle to play correctly.
On fretted instrument you have vast margins for error, but on a fingerboard you have to be exacting, so develop playing a fingerboard because it transfers to a fretted board easily....but a fretted board does not transfer to a fingerboard with the same ease.
Good luck with it and I hope this may help you out.
Most people give up too soon with Fretless. Don't make that mistake. Push through. The first 10 gigs are the hardest, then it just 'clicks'.
But hey, I've only been playing for 29 years (25 years on Fretless)....
I was kind of on the fence indeed, but I'll go on with it. I was more questioning the point of playing fretless in the context of my band rather than playing fretless altogether. I'll keep at it until it becomes more natural.
nope....haven't found one in a shop yet. Most P bass necks are a bit too uncomfortable to me though, so I just assumed that would be the case here. Only exception I found so far is the fire roasted ash 58 RI that came out this year (and which I own).
Thanks for clarifying that. I got the impression you were asking should you give up Fretless completely. Cheers.
I'd practice your setlist with the light turned off. Absolute best and fastest way to get your eyes off the fretboard, plus you can't cheat and sneek a peek. The thumb position behind the neck is everything. Try it sitting down to start, then try it standing.
Uuuuh nice! I've seen these ones and I am really interested! How do you like it so far?
But isn't the neck on these like the 50s Precision, meaning 1,75"? These are the chunkiest P bass necks I know of. I like them as well, but they're not exactly skinny necks
You should definitely try a TF to check, the neck is comfy and feels quite slim to me.
Thanks. That's why I prefer unlined fretless, that way I listen closer rather than using the lines. Still I refer to the side dots too much in my opinion... Well, work in progress!!
Couldn’t have said it better. I bought a guitar for the first time last year. I still stink at guitar. Why? Because I sound terrible and never pick it up to practice it. I just told my wife yesterday that I am finally going to play it every day, even if it’s only for 15 minutes. It’s the ONLY way to improve.
I really enjoy playing fretless. But I get what you’re saying. I definitely look down at my fretting hand a lot more when playing fretless. And I totally agree that the more you’re looking at your hands the more your performance suffers in a Rocks band enviremonment. I Sold my last fretless mainly because it was a 4 string and I mainly play 5 and 6 string but plan to buy another eventually. If not a Warwick or the fender Steve bailey signature I might build a warmorth 5 string fretless because fender won’t make them.Hi there,
Earlier this year I ended up getting a Tony Franklin fretless bass, a bit by accident. The deal was just too good to pass up. I never was too much of a fretless fan and besides I play 5 strings basses exclusively but this bass is different. I suddenly enjoyed playing fretless and became better at it. It was a challenge, but I enjoyed putting the work and noticing the improvements. My ears got much better as well in the process.
A couple of months ago, I decided to take it to band practice just to give it a shot. I ended up playing the whole evening with it. It went awesome, and the other band members seemed to enjoy it as well. I asked them to tell me the minute I am sounding off, and despite asking again a few times, they said it sounded great
2 weeks later, next band practice. This time I played much less with the fretless. I felt it was getting in the way of the "performance". By that I mean my eyes were almost glued to the fretboard and as such, I felt that I had to put too much effort to play in tune (including looking at the fretboard) and that this was to the detriment of playing together as a band. I felt the fretless did not add enough to the band as a whole compared to the efforts I had to put in. I felt selfish basically because for my pleasur (playing fretless), I was hurting the band by being less present, making less eye contact with the others and so on...
Since then, I kind of went back to fretted only and felt much better the next rehearsal. I even decided to sell the fretless and get a regular 4 string P. But now I am starting to doubt... On the one hand I like fretless, on the other hand there is so much I feel I should learn and having 2 young kids and a full time job doesn't give me much practice time in the evening. So I cannot do everything at once...
Anyone had a similar experience? I am sure practice is the way out from this situation, but still I would like to hear from fellow fretless players how it went for you.
Cheers!
D
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With any fretless instrument you have to play regularly to keep your intonation in (if I don’t pick up my cello for a couple of weeks it all gets more and more microtonal the further away I am from first position). I decided a while back to only play fretless bass and don’t even own one with frets these days... even so and even with playing every day, I still have my off days when I really have to work hard to get my intonation right. And having just gotten myself a fretless 5 there’s now a whole new string to deal with
- Sep 3, 2006
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Interesting. This past Friday I ordered myself a fretless Cort. I had a fretless once and liked it but was not very good at it and sold it. Then I took one in on trade for the store and played around on it for a few minutes then decided I didn't care for it. But I thought I would try again.
I believe it is an unlined fretless and the one I had before was lined. This will make it more of a challenge to me but since I play as much by ear and feel as I do technically I am hoping to adjust. This thread is actually encouraging.
I believe it is an unlined fretless and the one I had before was lined. This will make it more of a challenge to me but since I play as much by ear and feel as I do technically I am hoping to adjust. This thread is actually encouraging.
